April Bowl

Annihilated? Demolished? Damaged? Along with the roof of my porch, the snowpack was brutally beaten by this weekend's wind event. Numerous aspects are stripped to bare dirt, while in other places, the wind deposited dense slabs on old faceted snow. 

During our travels, we encountered bare ground, firm snow, breakable wind crusts, and punchy facets. While traveling over some of the firmer and hollow-sounding wind slabs was less than confidence-inspiring, we encountered no instabilities aside from some cracking and collapsing isolated to our skis. 

We observed evidence of a recent natural cycle in April Bowl that likely occurred with the height of instability during this weekend's wind event. Some of these slides were approaching D2 in size and were capable of burying an individual.  

We dug two pits adjacent to one of these avalanches (see snowpack notes) before deciding to descend back to the pass. The descent was remarkably smooth and consistent if you could stay on the thin ribbon of wind slab.

While many of the slabs this recent wind created are extremely firm, supportable, and well bridged throughout the slope, some may be thinner, more fragile, and lack the tensile strength to hold them in place. I'd be most suspect at the interface of these thick, stiff slabs and where you can still find breakable crusts and deep, wallowy facets, as triggering a small avalanche in these locations could still be possible. 

Encountered some hollow snow and some isolated cracking and collapsing. Observed some recent avalanches in April Bowl that likely ran with the height of instabilities during this weekend's extreme wind event.

We dug two adjacent pits at about 4300ft on a westerly facing slope in April Bowl. We dug between several natural avalanches that likely failed during this weekend's extreme wind event. In this loaded location, we found about 3 to 6 feet of snow capped by a knife-hard, supportable, 1-2 ft thick wind slab. The snowpits revealed fair structure, with the thick bridging slab lying on small-grained facets, but stubborn to unreactive results in our tests (ECTP 26, ECTX). 

In shallower locations, we encountered a thinner wind slab of about 3-6 inches lying on 1-2ft of large, well-developed facets. Travel through these locations was punchy and challenging.